When John, a conman, stumbles into a quiet little town in hopes of selling his swindle, he all too quickly finds himself in a land where logic has no place and much rather nonsense is much more important than its opposite. For this is the land of Streel and as John learns all-too-quickly, what's going on seems to be somewhere between his heart and his head, though he can't figure out quite how. John learns that Streel is ruled by a ferocious monster known as the Freel and journeys on to meet a compendium of baffling mediators who guide him without guidance and teach him without instruction. And so this is the quest left unto John, to free whatever it is of himself that is locked within this place that he has learned to be Streel and to save the woman that he has strangely met in this place between his mind and his soul.

Submitted:Apr 12, 2012
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Those that use words like a game are sometimes at liberty to take
those words and use them in ways that do not satisfy any true
goal other than the entertainment of those that use them.

The quintessential truth of Streel is that the heart that thinks
too much talks in circles and therefore thinks in circles as
well, which always brings it back to the point that it is in its
essence a heart that thinks far, far, far too much, but simply
can't relinquish because a circle is a splendid thing to be
relished and cherished and covered in relish so that it can be
thought of far too much.

I was looking for a truth about life, but it seemed that I was,
as a product of being me, the outside. I had never heard of the
town of Farlin and was headed there solely in the hopes of
finding new business. Times were hard and so was the sky above
me as I rolled onto the first dusty street and as I looked around
at the wooden, cabin homes, I felt a strange, eerie bleakness in
my heart as if the world was about to swell up from beneath me
and inhale everything, or perhaps just me, or something that
pertained to me. There was nary a single person out on the
streets of the town and occasional winds were kicking up dust in
the place of people. The sky continued to weigh down and I felt
it strange that in spite of its savage glow, there was no rain -
only a sense of weight and of time being consumed by something
that was far deeper and more painful than I yet knew. And so
there I sat, on horseback, watching a town that was locked in a
moment, a moment consumed by some unknown emotion, a moment from
which it could not escape.

Sitting there, I began to speak with Sir Vantes, saying, "Well,
what do you think, boy? Should we go in?"

I looked into his big, brown eyes that gave off a glow of
intelligence and understanding and as his mane rustled with the
movements of his long head, I felt his resistance and was once
more uneasy. But pushing on, I gave him a kick and we moved into
Farlin.

I had come to sell "defense," defense against an outside force
that I had but one way of knowing about - I was a conman. I
would sell weapons of defense to towns, wait for my 'supply
truck' to come, and then, when I saw the horse-drawn truck, would
flee to it and escape as the driver would send the horses into a
full-blown sprint. I had done this over and over for years and
made more than a living doing it. My supply truck, driven by a
group of cohorts, was always two days behind, just for effect and
this was how I survived in the world, this was how I avoided
death, by selling others the protection against a death that I
had no way of foreseeing.

Moving in through the town's front gates, I saw the most
unnatural-looking skeleton that I had ever seen. Its skull had
the shape of a cannon and the bones of it's body were all arced
like bent knees, except for its claws, which were powerful and
yet, at the same time, subtle. As I looked at the bizarre
skeleton with a perplexed gaze, I suddenly heard a voice. It was
the voice of a child piping in like a student who was sure he
knew the answer and it said, "That's the Liberor; he died a long
time ago and his bones were left here."

"Sure it is, kid," I responded sharply, "who's in charge in this
town?"

"In charge? No one really. You might want to talk to Agatha;
she's kind of in charge."

"Where can I find Agatha?"

"She lives in the house on the opposite corner of town; it's the
one with the big red window. She knows a lot of things."

"Thanks."

I intentionally moved on without asking the kid's name and began
to make my way across the town. It was a strange place,
assembled like an enormous square with a line of houses on each
of the four sides. Most of the houses were connected and as Sir
Vantes' hooves clopped against the hard, dry, dusty terrain, I
heard echoes, a sort of empty, dark, evil emanating from the
ground below, as if there were eyes right below my feet, or
perhaps they were teeth.

I found the house with the red window and was less than impressed
with what I saw. The 'big, red' window that the little boy had
described was more of a decrepit, broken square that just barely
held a pane of glass from falling out. The red paint was cracked
and chipping away, not to mention that the glass itself was
mud-splattered and gave off a vile, grungy appearance that was
amplified by the faded paint. The walkway leading up to the door
was heavily obstructed by hanging tree branches that reached down
from untrimmed limbs and the dying grass was intermittently long
where it had not yet completely dried up and died. Dismounting
Sir Vantes, I fought through the branches, feeling as though they
were arms, pushing me back, trying to hold me away. I heard them
snapping all around me as I put my head down and closed my eyes,
pushing through like a small animal, blazing a trail through
autumn's fallen leaves.

When I finally reached the door, with its deep, dark lines and
dry exterior, I knocked at it several times and was almost
instantaneously met by an old woman's five-toothed smile. Her
white hair was wild and unkempt with the appearance that she had
been pouring oil on it right before I knocked and her eyes were
peculiarly different; one was small, about the size of a marble
and the other was enormous, as if amplified by a magnifying
glass. "Yes, yes! I've been expecting you!" she began with
exuberance in her old, warbled voice, "You don't know how long
this town has been waiting to see you!"

"What?" I began in rebuttal, "What do you mean? I came here to
sell weapons, to sell protection. I don't have an appointment,
no one knew I was coming."

"Yes, yes, everyone makes plans and so do we, or so do I. Your
appointment wasn't with anybody or anything, but it was there
because I knew it was."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that you should hold on to what you're selling. Now,
what's your name, son."

"I don't know if you need to know that. I just want to talk to
whoever's in charge of this town, the mayor, the sheriff,
whoever."

"Well I don't know anything about any sheriff or mayor, but you
should talk to Mister Gareel and tell him that Agatha sent you to
finish it. But please, come in!"

Recalling that name from earlier, I began to ponder how my fate
was intertwined to Mister Gareel, why I was being pushed towards
him, but wrote that thought off as rubbish. I suddenly felt my
arm being grabbed as Agatha dragged me inside, turning around and
moving into obscurity.

The inside of the house was darker than night and fumbling like a
bat without a voice, I struggled to follow along behind the old
woman. I heard a chair scraping across the floor as it was
pulled out and suddenly felt my legs give out from under me as
the chair was shoved into the backs of my legs. I sat there,
looking forward into complete obscurity and began once more to
make my plea. "Please, I just want to go speak to whoever's in
charge!"

"I told you to talk to Mister Gareel, but right now, I want you
to watch."

"Watch what? I can't see anything!"

Suddenly, however, both of the old woman's eyes lit up like white
flames and I could make out that I was seated in front of a table
with a book on it. The book was old and covered in yellow dust
and mold. "This, my boy, watch this," she said while pointing at
the book.

She opened the pages and began to point, reciting some words in a
wispy voice as if they were a prayer that I was meant to hear or
perhaps take part in. "There was once a fisherman on a lake who
knew but two things: how to live and how to catch fish. But when
his line got snared to something on the bottom of the lake, he
didn't know what to do, for he only knew how to catch fish, not
how to fix problems caused by the fishing rod. And so he dove
down into the water, thinking that he would go down and untangle
the line - this was the solution of the man who knew little, to
fight the problem at what he saw as the source. Down he swam,
down, down, down towards the depths of the deep lake. And when
he reached where the hook was snared against a sunken boat on the
bottom of the lake, he realized he was running out of air. And
so he grabbed the line and tried to swim back up, but it was to
no avail because he didn't see the real problem. No one knows if
the man drowned or not, but he hasn't been heard from since."

I listened to the story in slight amusement and as the old lady
concluded, I asked, "And what was the real problem?" as a slight
jab at her lunacy.

"That's what you're here to find out, boy. What the problem is."

I looked at her with a sudden weight in my heart and returned to
my mantra "I'm just here to sell weapons; I have no interest in
your town's folk legends."

The old woman's eyes held open for a moment in a tremulous stare
as she inspected my face. Her eyes then shut like two cellar
doors, heavily and with a resonating sound that although almost
indistinguishable, reverberated into my heart. "Go then; go find
Mister Gareel. Maybe he can help you."

Her words sounded like the beats of a drum that was foreboding a
fateful event and yet I still felt as though there was a smile in
it and I was strangely offset. I fumbled through the small
dwelling and eventually made my way out, slipping through the
doorway and looking back at the dank house one more time as I
went. For some reason, my mind was particularly drawn to that
red window. Like the entrance to an ailing darkness, it stood, a
portal to some hideous basement of existence.

As I stepped out onto the street, I once more saw that little
boy. "Hey Mister, where're you going now?"

"To see Mister Gareel," I responded, strangely interested by the
boy's seeming role in my stay here.

"Yeah, you should talk to him. He lives over there."

The boy pointed at an eerily regal house that appeared as though
there was a mixture of smoke and shadow swimming in its painted
walls. There was almost a face in the darkened blue exterior and
as I moved in to begin my con all over again, I felt jaws coming
up from the underground once more, dragging me down to some other
world like a snake dragging its prey back home in its belly.

After tying up Sir Vantes, I began to approach the door and with
a fake, salesman's smile. I then proceeded up the stairs,
leaving the boy where he stood and knocked. I waited. I heard
rustling inside, rustling that could only be described as a
struggle, as if someone with an animal biting their leg was
trying to move away from the beast, trying to simply get it off
of themselves. The door clicked and before me stood a man who
was wearing an eye patch over both eyes. There appeared to be a
tiny hole in the right patch and so looking at that spot,
assuming that the man could see through it, I began to speak.
"Sir, I have travelled all the way from the far North to warn you
of impending danger. There is an army coming, a dark army of
bandits, thieves, murderers and worse. They overran my town in
the North, but luckily, as I deal in weapons, I was able to
escape. Granted the cooperation of you and your town, I am able
to help you forge an army and a full stock of weapons so that you
can protect yourselves from the onslaught."

"You're a bit late. The enemy showed up years ago."

I looked at him perplexedly for a moment and began to wonder.
What does he mean? How is that possible? There's no army; this
is a con.

"I don't think you understand, sir; I mean a real army with
pistols, rifles, swords and everything."

"Oh, I understand alright," the man said as he stepped fully into
the doorway, "just look at this house. It didn't always look
like this; not until the darkness came anyway. But come inside,
we'll talk."

I began to feel hesitantly good about my con, but as I took my
first step in, I felt the ground groan. I suddenly felt that I
was in my own world, or another world at the least, and the
eye-patched man whom I took to be Mister Gareel turned to me to
ask "You alright? Watch out now, the floor is tricky."

The man led me to a table where he sat and extended his arm so as
to indicate for me to sit across from him. "You're not quite
what I expected," he began, "but then I guess that's what you can
expect of right-handed people. There's so many of them and
they're all so unpredictable. Of course, left-handed people are
no different, but I can always tell the difference. Yes sir, I,
for example, am a lefty and that's why I can't avoid winding up
in Streel. Right-handed people, however, can very well avoid it,
but the problem is that they, like you, need to go in. Of
course, this has nothing to do with being right-handed or
left-handed, but rather has more to do with being handed
something and in your case, that something is a mission…or a
task, whichever you'd like to call it."

I sat and stared in absolute befuddlement at the strange person
sitting across from me and took up my spiel once more to try to
divert him from whatever he was talking about. "I came here to
sell you weapons to defend yourselves from the army of the North.
I thought you and your town would be interested in saving
yourselves."

"Oh, there's nothing to save yet, you have to understand that the
Freel rules Streel and therefore, our town is as good as dead
unless someone saves us from what's at the back of the wine
cellar."

I began to assume that the man had in fact spent a little too
much time in the wine cellar himself and putting myself up on my
feet, I said, "Alright, I guess you have no interest in
self-protection, so I'll move on to another town where maybe
they're more interested."

"Oh no, don't go. We're very interested. As the ordained leader
of this town, I am very interested in protecting my citizens.
Now, let's talk price."

The man's sudden change in consciousness and tone struck me as
odd, but sitting down, I began to deal in price for weapons,
horses and other equipment that didn't really exist. We talked
for hours about what could happen if the army of the North
descended upon the town, what they would need and how they would
survive. It seemed as though the man wanted me to keep talking
as he continued to ask questions that deserved long-winded
answers, but were more or less irrelevant to my swindle.

After countless hours of discussion with the man, I looked out
the window and saw that it was pitch-black outside - night had
fully descended on the town. "Well would you look at that, it's
nighttime. I hope you aren't going to head off into the dark.
You're more than welcome to take up a place here free of charge.
You can sleep here, in the basement. There's a room near the
wine cellar down there."

I looked at him cautiously, but realizing that the streets at
night would be treacherous, especially with the foreboding sky, I
agreed to stay the night.